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Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A
Fair and Balanced Look at the Right by Al Franken
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- Hardcover: 368 pages ; Dimensions
(in inches): 1.30 x 9.30 x 6.36
- Publisher: E P Dutton; (August 29,
2003)
- ISBN: 0525947647
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Book Description
Al Franken, "one of our savviest satirists" (People), takes
on the issues, the politicians, and the pundits in one of the most
anticipated books of the year.
For the first time since his own classic Rush Limbaugh Is a Big
Fat Idiot and Other Observations, Al Franken trains his
subversive wit directly on the contemporary political scene. Now,
the "master of political humor" (Washington Times) destroys
the myth of liberal bias in the media, and exposes how the Right
shamelessly tries to deceive the rest of us.
No one is spared as Al uses the Right's own words against them.
Not the Bush administration and their rhetorical hypocrisy. Not
Ann Coulter and her specious screeds. Not the new generation of
talk-radio hosts, and not Bill O'Reilly, Roger Ailes, and the
entire Fox network. This is the book Al Franken fans have been
waiting for (and his foes have been dreading). Timely,
provocative, unfailingly honest, and always funny, Lies is
sure to become the most talked about book of political humor in
2003 and beyond.
Having previously dissected the factual inaccuracies of a single
bellicose talk show host in Rush
Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot, Al Franken takes his fight to a
larger foe: President George W. Bush, the Bush Administration, Ann
Coulter, Bill O’Reilly, and scores of other conservatives whom, he
says, are playing loose with the facts. It's a lot of ground to
cover, as evidenced by the 43 chapters in Lies and the Lying
Liars Who Tell Them, but the results are often entertaining and
insightful. Franken occupies a unique place in the modern political
dialogue as perhaps the media's only comedy writer and performer who
is also a Harvard fellow as well as a liberal political commentator.
This unique and vaguely lonely position lends a charming quixotic
quality to adventures such as a tense encounter with the Fox News
staff at the National Press Club, a challenge to fisticuffs with
National Review Editor Rich Lowry, and an oddly sweet admissions
visit to ultra-conservative Bob Jones University (with a young
research assistant posing as his son when Franken's real-life son
refuses to participate in the charade). Less useful are comic book
dramatizations of "Supply Side Jesus" and a fictitious Vietnam War
story featuring the numerous righties who, Franken intimates,
improperly avoided service. And Franken's criticisms of conservative
talk show hosts Sean Hannity, O’Reilly, and columnist Coulter, while
admirable in their attention to detail, fail to shed much new light
on people who have built careers on broad arguments and relentless
self-aggrandizement. But Franken is at his best, and most
compellingly readable, when he backs off the wackiness and the
personal grudges and writes about more personal matters such as the
political circus surrounding the memorial service of the late
Senator Paul Wellstone. But even on these more serious topics,
Franken's wit is still present and, in fact, grows sharper. In a
time when much political discourse is composed of rage and shouting,
it's refreshing that Al Franken is able to shout in a witty manner.
--John Moe
About the Author
Al
Franken is the bestselling author of Oh, the Things I Know!, Rush
Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations, Why Not Me?,
and I'm Good Enough,
I'm Smart Enough and Doggone It, People Like Me!
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